Sailing On Lake Starbucks

 

WELL, I STARTED OFF TODAY IN FINE FORM. No sooner did I set my coffee down on my sacred corner table than I hit the straw and flipped the whole thing into the air and created Lake Starbucks on the floor.

What a dump.

I guess I’m off the Bomb Squad.

The Barista who had handled my transaction was quite pleasant, jovial even – not an easy trick at 6:30 AM. Her twinkling eyes and lilting voice disappeared when she was pushing that mop around trying to clean up my mess. So much for good customer relations. The look she shot in my direction when she finished mopping up my coffee could have melted plastic. I have a feeling that I am now on her “Spit in his coffee” list.

I Am In Control, But Bus Your Own Table

I CHECKED MY E-MAIL THIS MORNING like I do every day and after deleting 95% of the messages that are trying to sell me something, scare me about something, or to get me to help out some Nigerian Princess, I actually find one or two that are worth reading.

This morning I learned that today is officially “National I am in Control Day.” Well, I’m glad that somebody is – I just didn’t know that it was me.

Throwback Thursday From 2015 “One Person’s Trivia Is Another Person’s McRib”

Throwback Thursday From 2015

“One Person’s Trivia Is Another Person’s McRib”

SOMETIMES THERE IS A BENEFIT when the conversation takes a turn to something boring. This morning over coffee one of the Usual Suspects started to talk politics. My brain glazed over and my eyes began to wander. It was then that I saw a teeny-tiny online mention of no import.

“McDonald’s opens restaurant in 120^th country.”

Sonovagun. I never would have guessed it was that many.

While voices muffled by politics faded in the background I read on.

The newest nation to allow Ronald the Clown to cross their borders is – (Fanfare!)

When All Else Fails…

 

OK! OK! I KNOW WHAT THE DIRECTIONS SAY. I should always eat something when I’m taking my meds. On most morning my iced coffee is enough to buffer the effects of my handful of pills, but things have changed. I’ve started taking something new, on Doctor’s orders, and the game has changed.

My new Doctor has changed my medload and my body has yet to adjust to the altered chemistry in my tummy. When I take the new drug I have to eat something more than coffee or my gastrointestinal tract begins to re-enact the Charge of the Light Brigade.

“Half a league, Half a league, Half a league onward! Into the Valley of Death rode The Six Hundred.

“Cannon to the right of them. Cannon to the left of them. Into the Jaws of Death, into the Mouth of Hell rode The Six Hundred.”

Get the picture?

I Must Put My Foot Down

YOU’D THINK I WOULD HAVE LEARNED MY LESSON BY NOW, but i did it to myself again this morning. I should wait until after my morning coffee before logging into Facebook. And maybe something to eat as well.

It was barely 6:30 AM when I turned on my computer and hit the Facebook icon – and there it was. Some strange person, a friend of a friend of a friend I assume, posted that one of his favorite foods was a Peanut Butter and Pickle Sandwich.

Good God, man! It was not even sunup and you’ve gone and ruined my gastrointestinal tract for the entire day.

Throwback Thursday from Sept. 2015 – The Joys Of A Chicken Salad Sandwich

Throwback Thursday

The Joys Of A Chicken Salad Sandwich

THE OTHER MORNING, I and my wife, the lovely and the usually asleep at that hour, Dawn, both got up at about 7 AM. That’s my normal hour, but for Dawn it is not. I am her Organic Alarm Clock, waking her at 8:30 AM most mornings.

This “temporal distortion,” to borrow a phrase from Star Trek, threw off my schedule for the entire day. I was at St. Arbucks before 8 o’clock, back home by 10 and finished with lunch by 10:30. It was like having a chicken salad sandwich for breakfast. But – Why not I say!

It set me to thinking about your basic chicken salad sandwich and how incredibly versatile it is. I just had it for breakfast. It digests well with me early in the day. It has some bits of egg and mayo (made with eggs) in it so I think it can qualify as a technical breakfast.

Throwback Thursday from March 2016 – “One Person’s Trivia…”

One Person’s Trivia Is Another Person’s McRib

SOMETIMES THERE IS A BENEFIT when the conversation takes a turn to something boring. This morning over coffee one of the Usual Suspects started to talk politics. My brain glazed over and my eyes began to wander. It was then that I saw a teeny-tiny mention of no import.

 

“McDonald’s opens restaurant in 120^th country.”

Sonovagun. I never would have guessed it was that many.

While voices muffled by politics faded in the background I read on.

The newest nation to allow Ronald the Clown to cross their borders is – (Fanfare!)

KAZAKHSTAN.

I do have to admit that my knowledge of Kazakhstan is rather limited, but as a McDonald’s stockholder for the last 30+ years I feel obligated to learn what I can. So, here goes.

Nursultan Bazarbayev

Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked nation on earth (ergo: not much of a navy).

It has a population of about 18 million souls, and now, 1 McDonald’s.   The Capital city is Astana. The President of Kazakhstan is Nursultan Bazarbayev. He is generally considered to be an authoritarian ruler (read “dictator”). It is unknown at this time whether or not he likes the McRib Sandwich.     

That’s it. That’s all of the relevant information about Kazakhstan I could dig up.

McDonald’s, with its new restaurant in Kazakhstan, has well over 36,000 sets of Golden Arches worldwide. They employ 1.9 million people. I would wager that most of them are either teenagers, senior citizens, or people who were just not Taco Bell material. I may be wrong, but my personal observation of the McD’s here in Terre Haute (That’s Kazakh for “Where’s my Shamrock Shake?”) tell me that I’m not wrong.

In my own personal experience I have been in McDonald’s all over this country and in Ireland. I have no intention of trying to visit all of them. There are people who try to do that, traveling all over the map in a quest to visit them all. These are people who will eventually work at McDonald’s. Who else would hire them after looking at a resume with a twenty year gap during which they ate breakfast, lunch and dinner next to Ronald the Clown.

In an effort to gather information for this snippet of reality I went to the McDonald’s Corporate website to learn more about their worldwide operations. Fascinating.

McDonald’s has blanketed Europe. There are more than 50 Mickey D’s in Ireland. While I’m there (leaving for Dublin in just a few days) I may visit one to satisfy my need for fries (chips), but I think we will eat at home most days.

I learned that there are 11 McD’s in Lithuania, ancestral home of my mother’s side of the family. Europe is definitely well served.

The one glaring gap on the world map is on the continent of Africa.

There are about 23 McDonald’s in Egypt – more than I expected.

There are 200 stores in South Africa. That is way more than I would have guessed.

That’s it. Egypt on the north coast of the continent and South Africa at the other end. In between – nada.

If you live, let’s say in Burkina Faso (another landlocked country) and you have a craving for an order of Chicken McNuggets – you are SOL – Snack Out of Luck. You are going to have to hoof it across the Sahara to Egypt or, if you’re not in a hurry, pack a sandwich and head south, way south.

 

I admit that I have not delved deep into the subject to determine if there might be a Burger King or even a Subway (Sans Jarrod) in Burkina Faso. If there is – all I can say is “You deserve a break today. Boy, do you ever.”

The Turkey That Gobbled Tokyo

I’M A CITY BOY. Well, a Small Town Boy who grew up in town. I’ve never been hunting. I’ve never been camping. I have no desire to do either of those things. My idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service. If I need food I go to the Kroger store. Stalking down a deer or a turkey is too much work and holds no appeal for me. If my turkey doesn’t come wrapped in a net bag with one of those little “I’m Ready” pop up thingys in it I consider it unnatural.

I Won’t Go There. You Can’t Make Me.

TRYING TO UNRAVEL THINGS THAT ARE NOT OBVIOUS CAN BE A CHALLENGE AT 6:30 AM. They can be a challenge at 6:30 PM too, but the AM factor makes it harder by exponential degrees.

This morning, for example. The chain of events went like this –

1. My eyes opened.
2. I verified that I was alive and said a short prayer of thanks.
3. Turned on TV to local morning news.
4. They aired a story about a guy using his gas station as a B&B.
5. I slapped my own face. I couldn’t have heard that right.

But I had.

Looking For Logic In All The Wrong Places

EARLIER THIS MONTH OUR CAR WAS STOLEN. Not by Bonnie and Clyde or Don Corleone, or even Bernie Madoff, but by a couple of ##$@&^’s with the inability to decide what they actually wanted to steal.

When our car was found, about thirty minutes after I reported it to the Police, a bunch of stuff was taken from the car – and a bunch of somebody else’s stuff was left behind. It’s like our car was taken by pack rats.

Fast Forward to yesterday evening.

We Who Are About To Dine, Salute You

TODAY IS THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING – the day when people everywhere in this country are sleeping off an overdose of Tryptophan.

Turkey meat is chock full of tryptophan – a glorious endorphin that can make us relaxed, drowsy, and missing the second half of that football game we had planned on watching.

The guests who were invited to join in the dining event have all gone home, many with plates full of sliced turkey and stuffing in hand – “Care Packages” we used to call them.

The Joys Of A Chicken Salad Sandwich

THE OTHER MORNING, I and my wife, the lovely and the usually asleep at that hour, Dawn, both got up at about 7 AM. That’s my normal hour, but for Dawn it is not. I am her Organic Alarm Clock, waking her at 8:30 AM most mornings.